Charlotte Hornets Player Preview: Naz Reid

Naz Reid is a walking anomaly. 6'10" power forwards shouldn't be able to handle the ball and finish with finesse like he does. Undrafted players with character concerns rarely turn themselves into indispensable members of a championship-level team and the community it plays in. Nothing about Naz Reid is conventional, and the Charlotte Hornets are in the perfect position to maximize the quirks of their newly acquired big man. At every stop of Charles Lee's coaching career, a big man who can space the floor has been at the heart of his team's attack. Brook Lopez and Al Horford weren't true blue superstars in their primes, but they both provided a rare blend of spacing and rim protection to supplement championship runs in Milwaukee and Boston. Reid is cut from the same cloth as those two players, despite his reputation as a score-first big. The veteran big man has posted above-average block and steal rates for the majority of his NBA career. Even as his offensive load increased in Minnesota, Reid continued to create plays on the defensive end to maximize his overall impact. He isn't a stellar one-on-one defender by any means, but he does boast a rare blend of mobility, size, and strength that he wields impressively on that end of the floor, evidenced by his 84th percentile stop rate (steals + offensive fouls drawn + blocks per 100 minutes). Naz Reid steal and block numbers. | via Cleaning The Glass (https://cleaningtheglass.com/stats/player/4700#tab-defense_rebounding) Reid is also a great defensive rebounder who will pair nicely with any one of Charlotte's litany of front court options (Moussa Diabate, Hannes Steinbach, Grant Williams, Ryan Kalkbrenner) to create a dominant glass-cleaning pair that should always tilt the possession game in the Hornets' favor. The name of Reid's game is versatility. In each of the last two seasons Naz has split his minutes between power forward (46%) and center (54%) fairly event, and no matter what position he's played, Minnesota has won his minutes fairly handily. On offense, Reid's game is tailor-made to thrive in Charles Lee's offensive system. The seven-year veteran is an absolute bomber from deep (10.6 three-point attempts per 100 possessions last season) who hits them at an above-average clip. Reid needs to be accounted for not only as a spot up threat, but as a dynamic scorer off screens and hand-offs as well. The Timberwolves were creative with how they used Reid's skillset on offense as they leveraged his guard-like skillset off movement while allowing him to use his size as a post-up threat and offensive rebounding machine. Think about how Charlotte deployed Miles Bridges. When the team around him was healthy, Bridges became a low-usage wing who did the dirty work on offense while being relied on as a mismatch hunter for stretches. Insert Reid, a bigger, better shooting, more efficient player in that role, and it's easy to picture him blossoming as a member of the Hornets' starting five. My biggest question about Naz in Charlotte is how his impact will scale up in an increased role. His career high in minutes came in 2024-25 when he played 27.4 per game, and it's reasonable to expect him to blow that number out of the water now that he's projected as a starter with the Hornets. Can he extrapolate his impact as a Sixth Man of the Year winning change-of-pace bench option as an 82-game starter? The answer to that question will be a defining one of the next few years of basketball in the Queen City. I'm bullish on his ability to do so. Nothing about Reid's impact in Minnesota was fluky - he is a super talented, multi-faceted power forward/center with schematic and positional versatility that was stuck behind two incumbent Timberwolves starters. Reid boasts career averages of 11.9 points, 5.1 rebounds, 1.5 assists, 0.7 steals, and 0.9 blocks per game on 21.7 minutes per night. Per 36 those jump to 19.7 points, 8.5 rebounds, 2.4 assists, 1.1 steals, and 1.5 blocks. which is more in line with what to expect from Reid's maiden voyage in Charlotte. Jeff Peterson hasn't been shy about how his longstanding desire to bring Reid to Charlotte, and Naz will have all of the opportunity in the world to prove him right. Subscribe to our FREE Newsletter for the latest news and updates on the Charlotte Hornets Add us as a preferred source on Google